Talons of the Horned King 2.5: Later that Night...

The party camps out at the cliffs overlooking a sunken plateau in the mountains, to lick your wounds and to plan the coming exploration. Mendas and Erik arrive just after sunset, finding the party by the dual lights of a fire and the blue flickering of the arcane sphere.

Bartix dissects the body of one of the Dragonborn, and learns some valuable insights. Both he and Varin spend the entire night exposed to the nearby hovering ball, and to the strange magical effect coming from the valley below. Over the hours you feel the strength of magic itself vary in a completely unnatural fashion. Whatever is in the valley increases the natural ebb and flow of magic by several orders of magnitude. You know that as soon as you enter into the valley, all of your arcane powers will be affected, as well as those of any magical artifacts your party carries. If you wish, you can attempt to time your entry to a crest of power, but you know that these conditions would last an hour at most. With time and particular skill, you could even try to predict the flow or decipher the pattern.

The canyon path now opens up in front of you, revealing an immense, jungle-covered valley that seems to stretch over infinite expanses of green. In the center of this valley – and directly in front of you – is the visage of a giant mask buried in the overgrowth. The mask, which appears eerily like a human burial mask, measures hundreds of feet long in length and width, and easily covers the same amount of area as an archduke’s castle. The hill-sized mask has distinct eyes and a mouth, despite being buried under several feet of flora. The face also has eight large spires sticking out of its top, forming an odd sort of crown. Each spire towers 100 feet high in the sky.

To the left and to the right of the face are smaller sets of spires – each of these sets contains five spires, with each spire measuring approximately 40 feet in height. These sets of spires give the appearance that the buried face also has talons or claws, and that some god-like giant, hundreds upon hundreds of feet tall, is buried somewhere beneath the valley… and this giant was buried alive, and tried to claw its way out of its grave before mostly sinking back into its final resting place.

Far to the southeast, you can also see the faint outline of a ruined building – remnants of a castle, perhaps, or maybe a church. From the high point upon which you stand, you can also faintly see the glow of fires scattered on smaller hills throughout the valley. You have finally arrived at the Talons of the Horned King – and you are most certainly not alone...